There is an awesome art lesson book called Dynamic Art Projects for Children. It is, by far, the best printed resource for creative art lesson plans, in my opinion. I regularly use it for inspiration and direct instruction. I do the 'Dragon a in Cave' lesson every year with my fifth graders. I change Ms. Logan's plan slightly. I start by doing a step by step drawing of very basic shapes to draw a dragon. The kids then look at lots of resources to complete their drawings. Over the years I have complied many how to drawings of dragons and dinosaurs. They are helpful to expand kid's ideas. They are all encouraged to add many details to give their dragons lots of personality.

We do a mini lesson on adding texture where I use a worksheet to have them practice using basic patterns to make interesting textures. Students add some of these textures to their dragons. We outlined our dragons with fine tipped sharpie.

Students use colored pencils to add color and they are instructed to look at the color wheel to make good color choices. They are encouraged to blend and create "new colors". Students then carefully cut out their dragons. We use washable markers to draw a crooked zig-zag line across the papers. Students go over the marker lines a few times with different colors if they choose. They paint in the rest of the area with watercolor paints, blending the washable markers with the paint, letting them bleed into one another. After they are dry we cut them out and mount them to construction paper.